


Radio Silence

by bitboozy



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: F/M, Pre-Series Three, Requests, one shots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23203051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bitboozy/pseuds/bitboozy
Summary: After he's offered the DI position in Broadchurch again, Hardy decides to check in with Ellie, for the first time in two years, before accepting.
Relationships: Alec Hardy & Ellie Miller, Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller
Comments: 19
Kudos: 168





	Radio Silence

**Author's Note:**

> For @autumnsonata, who requested a fic about what happened when Hardy finally returned to Broadchurch.

Turning down the DI position is one of the hardest things Ellie Miller has ever had to do.

She stews about the matter for days. Weighs every pro and con, forces everyone close to her to sit down for a heart to heart. Drinks perhaps a bit too much gin once or twice.

And then finally, she tells Jenkinson no. Trying desperately to keep from sobbing throughout.

She’s a single parent now, she reasons. She’s more or less on her own, even with the very recent addition of her father in the house. Only in the last few months has she started to feel like a whole _person_ again. And the boys…well, she’s never quite sure about Tom, and that’s part of the problem. For Fred, all she wants is for his life to feel _normal_. For him not to feel what he’s missing. After two and a half years on their own, he’s become extraordinarily attached to her and any time spent away from him is time spent wracked with guilt.

So thank you. But no. She cannot accept the newly vacated position of Detective Inspector.

Two days later, Jenkinson informs her, purely out of courtesy, that she will be reaching out to Alec Hardy.

“ _Hardy_?” Ellie spits back. No one’s said that name aloud to her in…well, a while.

Jenkinson nods calmly. “Yes, word has it he may be looking for a change.”

“Oh, word has it,” she mumbles, bitterly. “Wasn’t aware he had words at all.”

Jenkinson eyes her both warily and sternly. “Is this going to be a problem.”

Ellie folds her arms across her chest and exhales. “No, ma’am.”

She rants to Beth over G&Ts for hours, despite the fact that absolutely nothing is set in stone yet. Which Beth repeatedly tries to remind her of, with little success.

She thinks about texting him one last time. Something unbearably witty and cruel. Just to let him know what he’d be getting into should he accept the position in Broadchurch. But she can’t bear another unanswered message.

*

Alec shows up at CID for his meeting with Jenkinson filled with trepidation he would never admit to. He keeps his hands in his pockets and says few words to anyone, including Jenkinson. The bare minimum. After the meeting, wherein he is made an offer that goes unanswered, he uncomfortably glances past the door of his old office, currently empty. Then he stops the nearest person – he cannot quite tell whether he actually knows them or not, to be honest – and poses one brief question.

“DS Miller?”

It’s her day off, he’s told. She worked through the weekend and now has Monday and Tuesday off.

He nods solemnly and continues on his way.

*

Ellie is at first deeply annoyed to have Monday and Tuesday off. Her boys at school, her friends at work. She doesn’t see the point in a day off if she must spend it alone.

But then she steps back through the front door after dropping Tom and Fred off at school and nursery respectively and realizes there is absolutely nothing stopping her going back to bed. And she smiles.

Around eleven, she changes into her gym clothes. Around 11:15, she changes out of them again, having discovered a _Fawlty Towers_ marathon on the telly that is more appealing. She’s just finished lunch when the doorbell rings. She groans, dropping her dishes in the sink, and wipes her fingers on a tea towel as she makes her way to the front door.

And there stands Alec Hardy, somehow looking just as surprised to see her as she is to see him.

*

The first thing he notes is her _hair_. It’s so long he can hardly focus on anything else about her.

“Jesus _Christ_.” She says it so derisively and with such force that he nearly takes a step back.

There’s a unbearably long silence, during which he takes in her leggings and her dark green tunic, the slippers on her feet. His hands push so deep into his pockets that he’s close to breaking the seam.

Finally he says, “Your day off.”

She stares at him dubiously. “Yeah, thanks, I’m bloody aware.”

He sighs dramatically, looking left then right, as if his appearance on her doorstep is illicit and scandalous.

“You gonna invite me in or just leave me out here on your – “

She cocks her head to the side, scowling at him. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Miller.”

Her face crinkles up with disgust. “Don’t you do that, you don’t get to say _Miller_ , all high and mighty and proprietary like that.”

He boldly decides to meet her cold gaze. Then, with a reluctant groan, she steps back and opens the door to him.

“Fine.”

He steps inside, again instinctively glancing around first. She slams the door then stands by it, arms folded.

“What do you want?” She demands. “Back to steal my job again?”

He frowns. “They told me you turned it down.”

She shrugs. “Yeah. I did. But. _Still_.”

Alec takes a quick glance around the front room, observing all the minute differences from the last time he’d stood here.

“Stop it,” she barks.

“What?”

“My house is not a crime scene anymore.”

He’s silent again for a moment, until it’s clear she’s growing more and more impatient. “Just wanted to see you’re okay with it. Me takin’ the job.”

She shifts her weight. “What’s it matter to you?”

“Right, okay. If this is how it’s goin’ to be then maybe best I turn it down,” he says.

It is in this precise moment that Ellie realizes that there is a distinct possibility she turned the job down in the hopes that he would come back and take it. And she is _horrified_.

“Do what you want,” is all she says while she wrestles with this epiphany.

“I can see you’re angry.”

“What? Nooo,” she mocks him.

He looks away from her. “Was tryin’ to give you some space.”

“Ignoring people is not how you do that, Hardy.”

He shrugs. “Seemed the best thing for you.”

“Why don’t you let _me_ be the judge of that?” She retorts. “For _once_.”

Apprehensively, Alec glances at the door, then at her, then at the floor. “Never been a very good…mate, like that. Not really the…friend type.”

She’s silent, which forces him to look at her. Her scowl has somehow deepened. “That’s not a thing.”

“What?”

“’The friend type,’ that’s not a thing,” she tells him. “You’re a sodding human being. There are, you know, _rules_ , certain things that are…understood between one human being and another.” There’s a brief moment in which she thinks she might go deeper but instead she simply continues with, “Someone sends you a text, you text back.”

“Right, sorry.” He hangs his head and turns his body toward the door, then pauses. “How’s Tom? And wee Fred?”

“ _Fred_ ,” she says too quickly, having been prepared automatically to correct him. “Oh.”

He nearly smirks at her, but manages to conceal it.

“They’re all right. They’re fine.”

He nods. “Hair’s grown.”

Startled, she instinctively touches it, cheeks turning just slightly pink. “Yeah.”

“………’s nice.”

When he looks at her this time, there’s something different in her face, in her eyes. Something more open. Vulnerable. Still pissed off as hell, but…present.

“I, um.” He stammers. “When I left – “

“It’s okay,” Ellie interrupts. “You don’t have to do that.”

In that moment, he takes a step toward her and he has no idea why he does it. Or how he did it. He simply…moved. She looks a bit startled, but remains frozen in place.

He purses his lips, then says, “Want you to know that – “

“It’s really all right.”

Whatever she’s afraid of, he’s suddenly afraid of it too. But he doesn’t know what it is. All at once he feels the urge to touch her, to feel the warmth of her flushed cheek, to pull her in close.

But what he says is, “Right then.”

She nods, as if that was exactly what she wanted to hear. “Take the job, Hardy.”

He nods back tersely. “Yeah.”

Alec goes for the door and she steps back to let him, then lurches forward and slams it shut. She rushes him, hands going to his face in the same second her lips attack his, the force of the kiss pushing him back against the door. He opens his mouth to her with a surprised and thoroughly pleased groan and when she slips her tongue past his lips, he grabs onto her hips and holds her in place. She’s pushing herself up on her tip-toes to reach him and loses her balance, her body pressing into his, each curve somehow fitting perfectly to his sinewy frame. He tugs at her tunic, struggling to get the purchase he wants, and then moans at both his body’s betrayal and the relief he experiences when he feels himself getting hard. She feels it too, and instinctively grinds into him, her fingers hooking onto his belt loops to keep him as close as possible. One of his hands flies up to her hair, grabbing a fistful of it as he pushes back into the kiss, a more than active participant.

When her hand drifts down to the tightness in his trousers, she sighs with great satisfaction, then suddenly flings herself backwards, gasping for air.

“Shit,” she exhales.

Leaning back against the door, his chest rises and falls quickly, and now the rest of him is reeling at how quickly their contact was broken. Barely containing her astonishment, she tries to smoothe out her tunic, then flings her hair back over her shoulders. He stares at her, unable to move.

Then she points a warning finger at him. “That never happened.”

“Uhm.”

“D’you hear me?” She breathes out, breath finally caught. “ _Never. Happened_.”

“…Right.” He tries to stand up straight on his own, though he’s a bit wobbly.

“Go on,” she says, gesturing at the door.

Blinking rapidly, he opens the front door, throwing a befuddled glance back at her.

“Drive safe,” Ellie tells him, feigning a note of nonchalance.

“…Yeah.”

She grabs hold of the door to close it behind him. “See you at work. Boss.”

Then she sits down on the stairs and buries her face in her hands. "Shit, shit, _shit_."

***


End file.
